The Fixer

Add the NOLET’s gin, dry curaçao, maraschino and elixir vegetal (don’t have it? try a few dashes of green Chartreuse) to a chilled mixing glass. Add ice and stir until well chilled. Rinse a cocktail glass with Scotch (I used Oak Cross from Compass Box). Strain the chilled drink into the glass and garnish with the lemon twist.

Notes:

Rose, citrus, cherries, anise on the nose. Light and dry on the palette upfront with floral notes, herbs, mixed citrus, there is a bit of a complex boozy, sugar and cherry laced punch toward the end that mellows out with a crisp smooth finish. For fans of Martinez/Martini style cocktails, this one is sure to “fix” you up (…yeah I went there) this holiday season.

History:

Time for another Mixology Monday:Anise cocktail. What can I say, I warned you guys I was hooked on anise this time of year (…settle down pervert). While previous entries, The Handy Bird, and A Nise One, were brown spirit and “herb” based, respectively, The Fixer, is a floralgin based cocktail, with very light anise accents, that will please even those who are not as addicted as I might be.

The Fixer actually started off as challenge over Thanksgiving. “See if you can make a drink with these four ingredients,” my mother said as she closed her eyes and blindly grabbed four bottles from the cabinet. Hhhm… NOLET’s, Oak Cross Scotch, maraschino and dry curaçao. Two very different base spirits and two somewhat redundant sweeteners. “Great.” I thought, “What the hell am I supposed to do with these?”

While it probably would be tasty with any gin, the strong floral flavors of NOLET’s ended up really being key in this one.

Not wanting to admit defeat, I started planning how to best use the ingredients. Straight up mixing Scotch and gin seemed like a terrible idea, especially such a floralgin as NOLET’s. Rinsing the glass to give the drink a hint of heavier Scotch flavor seemed to be the best way to make these two bases play nice.

Since they both are sweeter ingredients, I decided to split the maraschino and dry curaçao in the drink, which actually turned out really tasty. The maraschino adds a smooth texture while the dry curaçao, aside from it’s orange flavor, brings a slightly …drier flavor to the mix. The combination was definitely a nice touch and not as redundant as I’d imagined.

I later added in some Elixir Vegetal, sort of as a bitters, but also to add some herbal notes to round out the flavors of this one (sub in a bit of green chartreuse if you don’t have this hard to find ingredient). Since I seem to enjoy sprinkling Elixir Vegetal on everything, including my cereal, I ended up preferring it this way (shocker) and figured I might as well share it with you fine folks for MxMo Anise.

For fans of Martinez/Martini style cocktails, this one will be great year round, but also makes a great alternative for the holidays, especially to toast in the new year for those who aren’t champagne fans.

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[…] an all out anise assault with an emphasis on other herbal flavors. I toned things down a bit with The Fixer, originally a “challenge” cocktail, this one favors the Martini/Martinez, using only a […]